EMC looks to military to swell ranks of sales and techie army

'Right you 'orrible lot, who wants to be an EMC Certified Implementation Specialist?'

EMC is trying to close the skills gap by recruiting the next wave of sales and technical personnel from the armed forces, training steely eyed military leavers for a life on Civvy Street… well, flogging storage.

The corporation, in conjunction with specialist military support service X-Forces, is putting 20 people through their paces in a seven-week course that culminates in accreditation, assuming they pass.

The course will be a mixture of lab and online training, and an EMC mentalist mentor will be on hand to give ongoing support after the event, the company told us.

Those that come out of the back-end unscathed will carry the EMC Certified Implementation Specialist and Technical Architect badge – they get this for free irrespective of whether EMC employs them or not.

There are currently about 20 ex-military leaders working at EMC, including UK public sector director Ian Heath, and UK resident practice manager JT Lewis, a former chief in the US army.

“The military is very good at training and that maps well with what people in the IT industry need to do – stay current,” an EMC spokesman told us.

No job is guaranteed at the end of the course, which EMC says will cost the firm £250k to run, but the 20 candidates will also be offered to prospective employers in EMC's channel.

“As we all know, there is a massive skills shortage in the industry,” the EMC PR man said.

Of course there’s also a certain skills hole at the top of EMC after former UK boss James Petter, also an ex-infantry officer in the British Army's Royal Green Jackets, recently decided to move across to camp Pure Storage. ®